


with these cindered bones

by ataxophilia



Category: The Hour
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 07:27:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3126041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ataxophilia/pseuds/ataxophilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The little girl smiles again. It looks sad, but there's no sorrow in her voice when she says, "Now. You are here, and he is here, but I see no reason to let either of you leave again."</p>
<p>An Orpheus AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	with these cindered bones

**Author's Note:**

> For Zabbers, who asked for an Orpheus and Eurydice AU, and who always knows exactly what to ask me to write for these two. I got a little carried away. I hope you don't mind.
> 
> This is unbeta'd again, I'm sorry. As always, let me know if you see any mistakes. 
> 
> Warnings for deaths -- both canonical (Sofia) and non, but off-screen and never really mentioned in any concrete terms (Randall)

She's heard a story like this before.

Or maybe she's lived it -- here, on the wrong bank of the river, the boundaries between this life and all the lives before and after it are breaking down, histories and futures and presents pressing together in her mind like too much music played at once. 

But she knows it, is the point. And maybe she knew it before she came down here, before she pressed a coin into the ferryman's hand and ignored his, "Are you certain?", or maybe she'll know it when she gets back, but either way, the story is there, waiting to be relived. 

There's one who dies and one who is left behind, and the one behind cannot live without the one gone. There often is, in stories like these, but this time the one behind decides that must be something that can be done.

It's a story, after all. All kinds of impossible things can be done in stories.

Lix -- she's almost certain that she's Lix; of all the voices clamouring to be heard in her head, Lix is the surest, like she knows the shape of this skull and is at home there --  thinks, there is no harm in trying, at least. 

And so she stands on the wrong bank of the river, the ferryman already ferrying himself back over to the living side, and eyes the path ahead. 

She hadn't expected paving stones in the underworld, but there they are, laid out before her like a London street. They're uneven. It's probably to taunt her, she decides, and says, out loud, "He'd hate that." 

Hearing herself speak solidifies Lix in her head, all the other voices dimming until she feels almost like herself again. More importantly, it clears the confusion the ferry ride had thrown up in her memories, and Randall is there again, the reason she came down here, a photograph clenched in her hand and her hair loose like it was in Spain. Something in the fog creeping around makes her a disappointed noise, as though the paving stones were meant to make the confusion worse, not help her through it.

Lix tuts, adjusting her glasses and stepping forward onto the path. "Well," she says, to the noise. "He would." 

The noise doesn't sound again as she makes her way forward, but maybe twenty paces along a moaning starts up. "Theatrical," Lix mutters, tightening her fingers around her photograph and letting the crinkle of photographic paper chase away the slight fear tugging at her heart. 

And then, between one blink and the next, a face appears in the fog. 

It takes her a beat to work out why she knows it, but when she does, her steps falter. The face is stretched into a scream, mouth too wide, eyes caught on the verge of tears. It'd make a beautiful photo -- did make a beautiful photo, Lix remembers it hanging in her makeshift dark room, shaded red and black,  _woman crying out for her husband as he's dragged away_. And there, where her skirts would be, another face looks directly at Lix, like the child had looked straight into the camera, a steady kind of terror in his face. 

There's no blame. Just fear, soft and liquid and pouring from the very edges of him. That's what had made the photo so good. That's what made Lix feel the guiltiest, after. It's what makes it so harrowing now.

Nobody says a word. The faces stay static in the fog, no matter how long Lix watches them. In the distance, the moaning continues, unbroken. But, somehow, Lix can hear accusations whispering past her. 

Finally, after a stretch that could have been a few minutes or could have been hours, she's not sure it even makes a difference down here, she tears herself and steps on. 

She gets ten steps, this time. Ten steps, and then a line of young boys, staring resolutely forward as tears catch, frozen by the timelessness of photography, on their cheekbones and eyelashes. Lix turns, instinctively, to her other side, to where they're all looking, but there's nothing there. Of course there isn't. She'd only photographed the boys, not the men or their guns. The boys made for better pictures. 

One of them has a white flower tucked behind his ear. She hadn't seen it at the time, but it had been what made the photo, in the end. The little flash of purity, the boys' innocence made solid in silky petals that fell into puddles of rust red after the ringing of the shots had cleared from the air. 

She'd been so proud of that photo. Of how gracefully she'd captured their last moments. 

Now, the whispers are back, asking what else she could have done, what more. 

"I'm sorry," she says, quietly, her free hand making an aborted movement, as though to catch one of the boys by the sleeve and drag him away. "It wasn't enough."

Nothing moves. 

Lix steps forward. 

The fog is cold but not cold, she realises. It clings to her sleeves and her trousers and the soft curls of her hair, leaving little diamond teardrops behind. If she was in the breathing world she'd be shivering, but down here she feels the chill without it leeching into her skin. 

Five steps. 

The baby isn't screaming. It isn't even crying. It's just watching Lix, its big blue eyes unblinking. Even then, in reality, it had seemed like an eternity before the child closed its eyes. 

Lix never checked if it was a boy or a girl. She still doesn't know -- but she can see the whole picture, even though only the child's face is showing in the fog. The ragged blanket, the overflowing bin, the torn up poster framing its head, too colourful in the otherwise bleak scene. 

At the time, it was her proudest photograph. The crowning jewel in her portfolio; the image of the Spanish Civil War for everyone who saw it. This solemn infant, abandoned with streaks of gunpowder black on its cheeks, as though a soldier had stroked their fingers over the soft skin, just once, before leaving it there. The blue of the eyes against the brown skin against the gaudy poster against the rest of the greying rubbish. Human and haunting and perfect.

The irony had tasted bitter on her lips, after. A child for a child. She never did do anything for the baby, never even told anyone who'd care to help where she found it. 

This time she does reach out, her fingers tracing the gunpowder stripes, the baby dissolving under her touch. 

She knows, in the pit of her stomach, what will be greeting her next.

The fog gives her three paces to prepare herself. It's not nearly enough, but then, she's not sure she could ever take enough steps to be ready for the face that curls out of the fog. 

Lix has never seen it before, not like this, at least. Sharp cheekbones, round jaw -- the girl in the fog looks achingly like Lix's mother must have, when she was a teenager. The corner of her mouth is quirked in a half-smile that is all Randall. There's a curl in her hair to match Lix's, but hers falls long and dark over her shoulders and her chest. 

"Oh," Lix says, hand clenching uselessly around her photograph.

She's looking just past Lix's head, her eyes dancing with laughter at some scene Lix knows she won't see in the fog behind her. Lix's breath sticks in her throat. The girl is beautiful. 

It's not real. She knows it isn't real. She remembers the way Randall felt under her hands after they found out the truth, his sobs tearing out of him, his whole body shaking with the force of them. She remembers sitting in the bathroom stall muffling her own gasping breaths with the heel of her hand. Sofia was never a teenager. Sofia never watched someone with that crooked smile and those laughing eyes. 

But oh, it feels real. It feels true. 

"Oh," she says again, more of a exhale than a word. "Sofia."

Sofia's eyes snap to hers. Her half smile stretches into a full grin -- this smile is all Lix -- and she reaches out a hand. Lix returns the gesture without thinking, eyes caught on that beam, but the fog melts away just before their fingers can meet.

Lix blinks, and Sofia is gone. In her place sits a little girl, no more than ten years old. 

The girl tilts her head, considering Lix. "I can't give her back to you," she says, eventually, when Lix's hand has fallen back to her side. Lix blinks and then nods carefully, mouth too dry to reply. The girl watches her for a moment longer before smiling, sudden and bright. "But she's not what you're here for, is she?"

For a heartbeat -- a single, painful heartbeat -- Lix wants to deny it, to beg this pristine little girl to bring Sofia back. 

But the edges of her photograph are still digging into her palm, solid and unyielding and  _real_. 

The Sofia Lix saw in the fog was beautiful but false, nothing more than an illusion. 

Randall is a truth. The only truth, she thinks, sometimes. 

She raises her jaw. "No. I'm here for Randall."

The little girl spreads her hands. "Of course you are." She lifts one hand and flicks it lazily, then watches intently over Lix's shoulder. Her face breaks into a smile after a few seconds, and she turns back to Lix to say, "And now he's here for you, too."

Lix inhales sharply and turns, only to be stopped by a laugh that sounds like windchimes on a windy day. "Oh, Lix," the little girl says, somehow impossibly young and impossibly old at once. "Surely you know this part already." 

"Yes." Lix dips her chin once, and then looks back to the girl. Of course. All stories have their catches. "I'm sorry." She's not sure who she's apologising to. She's not sure it matters.

The little girl smiles again. It looks sad, but there's no sorrow in her voice when she says, "Now. You are here, and he is here, but I see no reason to let either of you leave again."

This part, Lix was prepared for. The stories couldn't tell her what she'd have to go through to reach death, or Hades, or whoever was waiting in the underworld for her, but they did tell her she'd need an argument. 

Lix's singing voice is the kind that weaves perfectly into smokey nights under the stars, too much alcohol and laughter, the kind of memories that are blurred the next morning. In the starkness of the underworld it would sound weak, nowhere near enough to say everything that ought to be said about Randall, and the way Lix needs him. 

Her words, too, would ring false and fall flat. Randall has always defied her voice, even when she had him in her and above her and all around her. Too much of what's important about him is too small, too intricate, too precious for her to properly capture. She's better suited to writing about countries and their wars. The big, sweeping things. 

Randall is many things, but none of them have ever been big or sweeping.

So instead, she has brought photography. 

The pictures she takes have always been more about the small, human things than her writing could ever be. It's their strength, she knows. 

And now, she hopes, it'll be enough to save them both. 

"This," Lix says. She holds out the photo. "This is your reason." 

The little girl's head ducks to one side again, studying the slightly crumpled paper in Lix's hand. She looks lost, like she's never faced a situation like this before. Lix supposes she probably never has. "What is it?"

Lix smiles, just a little. "It's a photo. Of Randall," she adds, unnecessarily. "I took it. Years ago, now. But it's the best one I've ever taken, I think." Better than the little baby in the bin, better than the boys lining up to be shot, better than the woman screaming for her husband and her little son staring into the camera. 

From an objective point of view, it isn't even close to her best photo. It's over-exposed, and badly framed, and the corner is smudged from where she picked it up before the ink was properly dried. It wasn't even taken on her camera -- she was messing around with his beaten up old camera, and she took the picture seconds after he'd given up trying to steal it back. 

The left side of his face is lit up with late afternoon sunlight. It's too bright, his cheekbone and his lips and his forehead on fire. The other side is darker, but it's still easy to pick out the remnants of a smile in his eyes. His mouth is quirked into the half-smile he'd passed onto the Sofia in the fog, but it's warmer on him in the photo, fond and a little helpless, like he'd rather not be smiling but he can't stop himself. His gaze is just as warm, heavy with something they'd called lust at the time. It's looked more and more like love to Lix as the years have gone by. 

When she pulled it out of her desk drawer, before she came down to this world, the quiet adoration written into his expression had left a fierce, aching pain in her chest. 

The little girl takes the photo delicately, cradling it in her hands and staring down at it. "He loved you," she says, glancing up at Lix and then behind her, where Randall is standing. 

"I need that," Lix replies. "I've needed it ever since he first gave it to me. It's what keeps me upright. Even when he wasn't there, it was knowing that he loved me, once, that held my spine in place. And I-- I didn't know that, until he was gone, and there was no way for me to give it back." She swallows. The little girl is watching her, face impassive. "I never told him that. I never told him that I-- that I loved him back. And it doesn't seem fair, to me, that he should die without ever letting me hold him up in return, when he's been holding me up all these years."

She thinks maybe she hears a sharp breath from behind her, or a laugh, perhaps, but there's no way to be sure. She can't look around to check. 

She watches the little girl, instead, and the little girl stares back, her eyes unblinking. 

Until, suddenly, the little girl looks away. 

"I thought," she says, to the photo, "Nobody would ever be able to convince me to let someone go, not again." Lix bites down on the inside of her cheek. There is hope blooming treacherous in her stomach, and she cannot afford to give in to it. The little girl smiles sadly, her fingers tracing slowly over the photo. "It is a pretty picture." She lifts her chin, meeting Lix's eyes again. "To match your pretty tragedy, I suppose. I like you, Lix. And I like your reason."

The little girl spreads her arms again, the photo between two of the fingers of her right hand. Her smile has slipped into something gracious and queenly. "You are free to leave this world. Both of you." 

"Oh." Something in Lix's heart cracks and a softness spreads through her chest; she's done it. She's won Randall back. "I-- thank you."

"I know." The little girl dips her head in acknowledgement. "You still can't look at him. Not until you're both back in your world. Rules are rules, I'm afraid."

"Of course," Lix agrees. It's taking everything in her to keep from turning already, but the end is in sight, now. The chance that they might make it is getting stronger with every second that passes. 

The little tosses her head and laughs quietly. The gesture makes her look like a child again, less like royalty and more like someone's daughter. She brings her arms back down, and then holds the photo out to Lix. "I think it's your best picture, too," she tells her once Lix has taken it back. "I hope you're happy, Lix. Whatever happens." Lix nods, and the little girl smiles. "And I hope I don't see you again until you're ready to stay."

"Yes." Lix smiles. "So do I." The little girl laughs again, and then she's gone, dissolving into the air like the fog had. 

Lix blinks. Without the little girl, it feels unnervingly like she's alone. She aches with the need to turn and check that Randall is truly behind her, but she won't. She can't. She's won -- she's not throwing that victory away just because Randall can't prove his presence. 

The path back to the river isn't paved this time. It isn't even a path, just an endless field of grey-green plants that clutch at her ankles as she walks through. And yet, somehow, she knows where she must go. 

She can feel the fog rising from each footstep she leaves behind her, and wonders if Randall is leaving prints, too. If he'd be solid, were she to give in and look. If he'd smile wryly, forgiving her with a gentle look as he fades away into nothing. 

Something whispers, low and rough and Scottish,  _you won't know unless you look_.  _  
_

A shiver runs down her spine. The fog is getting thicker, and with it the whispers are growing louder. They're insistent in a way they weren't on her way in, cajoling, like fingers catching at her shirt to try and pull her around.

_She's gone_ , they tell her,  _she never watches this part, she'll never know_.

Or,  _he wants so desperately to see your face again, he's been wanting it since you arrived here, oh, won't you show him your smile again_.

Or, worst of all, just as she catches sight of the river, of the ferryman stood in his boat,  _there's nothing there, there's nobody behind you_.

_She's tricked you_. 

Her feet stumble. 

_As if she'd ever really let him go_.

Her head half turns, eyes flickering shut at the last moment.

_As if she'd let you win_.

Her hands tighten against the urge to  _look_ , to make sure he's there, he's with her, and the photo crumples. She blinks, confused by the texture against her palm for a second, and then looks down to her hand, away from whatever is or isn't behind her. 

In the picture, Randall is still watching her, eyes warm, smile constant. 

She takes a rough, shuddering breath. The ferryman is watching her with a blank face. She can see the uncaring line of his mouth. Home is so close; she can wait that long. She can stand the not-knowing that long.

The whispers fade, one last,  _trick_ , brushing through her before she is alone again. 

The ferryman doesn't acknowledge her as she climbs shakily into his boat. He doesn't row any faster than he had earlier. Lix is too afraid of what she'll find on the other to ask him to speed up. Randall, if he's there, remains as silent as if he wasn't. 

But then, finally, the hull hits the bank. The ferryman turns to Lix, and she makes her way out of the boat, pausing to thank him as she passes him. He nods once and looks away. There's nothing in his face to tell her whether Randall is with her or not. 

She waits until she can't hear his rowing. 

And then she turns.

Randall is smiling a crooked half-smile. "You did it," he says, his hands twitching once, twice, three times by his side. Lix's breath rushes out of her in a sob, and then his arms are around her, pulling her into his chest. "You did it," he says, again, and his voice is as warm as his eyes, dancing with wonder and laughter and something she thinks might be love. He lifts a hand to the back of her head, tangles his fingers in her hair, and she laughs, keeps laughing until her ribs are aching.

"I did it," she repeats, hands on his jaw, and he's solid against her, warm with blood, his chest swelling with breath, he's real, he's alive. 

He's hers again.


End file.
